Significant developments in previous years in the Washington-London relationship led analysts to argue that there is no more “special relationship” between U.S. and Britain.

It is perceived that UK’s Iraq record strained “special relationship” between the United States and United Kingdom. According to an American expert, Britain’s lack of interest in Iraq after the invasion has “cast a long shadow” over the country’s military reputation. In addition, David H. Ucko of the RAND Corporation, argued in an article for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) journal that “Britain’s position in the changing world” has to be called into question. “Having entered Iraq as a junior coalition member, Britain was always less interested in seeing the operation through or responding robustly to new challenges,” he wrote.” The limited engagement had crippling effects on the troops in theater and strained the partnership with the United States. (1)
The American writer was critical to UK’s presence in Afghanistan as well. The latest U.S. diplomatic documents released by Wikileaks contain harsh criticism of the UK military effort in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2009. Criticism of the British military effort goes back to 2007 when Gen. McNeill was in charge of NATO forces. He criticized a deal with the Taliban which allowed British troops to be withdrawn from Musa Qala in 2006, saying it “opened the door to narco-traffickers in that area, and now it was impossible to tell the difference between the traffickers and the insurgents”. (2) In addition, recent British forces withdrawal from Helmand under new U.S. plan for Afghanistan, the move brought back unhappy memories of the 2007 withdrawal from Basra in southern Iraq, which provoked jibes about British forces being bailed out by the Americans.(3)
Moreover, the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Lockerbie bomber, by the Scottish government was an important factor which badly affected the U.S.-UK relationship. Al-Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on August 20, 2009 following doctors reporting on August 10, 2009 that he had terminal prostate cancer and was expected to have around three months to live. U.S. took critical stance on Lockerbie bomber release. While U.S. President Barack Obama expressed surprise at the decision, stating “I think all of us here in the United States were surprised, disappointed and angry about the release”. (4) According to analysts, British government may have been pressuring for the release of Al-Megrahi in order to secure economic deals with their new allies in Libya, which is contrary to international law and despicable behavior. It can be argued that the release of Al-Megrahi , for the Americans, is not just about justice; it is also about trust -- the White House sees the release of Al-Megrahi as a blatant breach of an agreement given by the British Government that he would serve out his sentence in Scotland. “It is impossible to sustain a relationship, let alone a special one, if one partner can no longer believe what the other one says.” In Whitehall there are already nervous mutterings about whether intelligence-sharing and military cooperation will be able to continue in the same way. (5)British Petroleum (BP) disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was another important factor which negatively affected the U.S.-UK relationship. U.S. President Obama pledged to hold BP accountable for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The event impacted Obama as he came under pressure to show that his administration is in charge of the effort to contain and stop the oil spill.
These developments undermined the quality of the U.S.-UK relations. However, recent changes in the Middle East have brought together these strategic allies once more. Ever since a man in Tunisia burned himself to death in December 2010 in protest at his treatment by police, pro-democracy protests have erupted across the Middle East. If fact the uprising in North Africa and the Middle East is led by middle-class; tech-savvy young people seeking economic and political justice. Tunisia’s president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has fled his country after weeks of mass protests culminated in a victory for people power over one of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes. In Egypt, after 18 days of mass protests former president Hosni Mubarak resigned and handed power to the military. The wave of protest spread to the other authoritarian Arab states Yemen, Bahrain and to Libya. However, unanticipated crackdown by Muammar Gaddafi was not tolerated at all by western countries, and they attacked Libya in a concerted action. The rationality behind implementing such an international interventionary policies was that, by pooling their resources and acting in concert, they can improve their overall power position within the international system and their security relative to states outside the alliance. The U.S. president in his recent visit to Britain ended false perception about the U.S.-UK relationship by insisting that the two countries has a special responsibility to spread their shared values in the world, although those aspirations are colliding with facts on the ground.(6) “Together we have met great challenges. But as we enter this new chapter in our shared history, profound challenges stretch before us,” Obama said. The visit culminated in Obama becoming the first U.S. president to address both houses of parliament in the medieval Westminster Hall, a venue he used to insist that Washington’s alliance with the former colonial power in the old world was “indispensable” today.
Today, the relationship with the United States represents the “most important bilateral partnership” in current British foreign policy while United States foreign policy affirms its relationship with the United Kingdom as one of its most important enduring bilateral relationships,(7) as evidenced in aligned political affairs, mutual cooperation in the areas of trade, commerce, finance, technology, academics, as well as the arts and sciences; the sharing of government and military intelligence, and joint combat operations and peacekeeping missions carried out between the United States armed forces and the British Armed Forces. Bearing in mind that British forces participated in the United States-led war in Iraq-Afghanistan and unlike France, Canada, Germany, China, and Russia, the United Kingdom supported the United States. The recent development and Arab spring is a determining factor in understanding the depth of the U.S.-UK relations and illustrates that the “special relationship” is still special.
Notes :
1-http://www.politics.co.uk/news/foreign-policy/uk -s-iraq-record-strained-special-relationship--$213 82337.htm
2-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-11906147
3-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/a fghanistan/7530725/British-forces-to-withdraw-from -Helmand-under-new-US-plan-for-Afghanistan.html
4-”US Senators believe BP was behind release”. BBC News. 16 July 2010. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
5- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnist s/rachel_sylvester/article6816407.ece
6-http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1b473af4-86b0-11e 0-9d41-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1NftrvlzD
7- Matthew Lange, James Mahoney, and Matthias vom Hau, “Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies”, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 111, No. 5 (March 2006), pp. 1412-1462
*Mohammad Reza Kiani is a final year Ph.D. candidate at Iran’s Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, and executive manager of Iranian Journal of Political Science and International Relations